January 20, 2026
Yesterday, I passed the Red Hat EX188 exam, which allowed me to renew my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers certification.
I had a very good memory of this exam from the last time I took it, so I was happy to go through it again.
Different from last time, I did encounter some difficulties with the last exercise, which was a little surprising to me, since the last time I found it testing the same capabilities as a walk in the park, but maybe this time I simply started with the wrong foot.
This obviously had no major impact on my exam, allowing me to easily achieve and exceed the required score to pass.
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November 13, 2025
Earlier this month, I sat the Red Hat EX374 exam to renew my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform certification.
As I’m already a Red Hat Certified Architect and have passed this same exam a couple of years ago, I wasn’t too worried about it.
Still, it is always interesting to see how exams evolve.
When I registered for the exam, I quickly checked the Objectives and remembered that it covered both Ansible core content (playbooks, modules, roles) and a lot of Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) capabilities, such as controllers, collections, and execution environments.
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October 16, 2025
Three years passed from the last AWS exam I took, and my AWS certifications were due for renewal.
The first thing I checked was the exam code, which I had taken three years ago.
It turns out that last time I took the SAA-C03, and this time I would also have taken the same exam.
This time around, I considered doing the SAP-C02 instead, but, given the very limited time, I decided on the SAA-C03.
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August 31, 2025
Last week, I renewed my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Network Automation (EX457) certification.
As I’m already a Red Hat Certified Architect and have passed this same exam a couple of years ago, I wasn’t too worried about it.
Still, it is always interesting to see how exams evolve.
Since I did not remember the kind of content that was there last time, I read the objectives page and assumed it would have been more on the networking side.
But, in reality, the exam leaned much more toward Ansible playbooks, modules, and automation patterns than network-specific plumbing.
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July 30, 2025
At this point, it has become kind of a ritual for me: renewing my Google Professional Architect Certification during the summer months.
This time around, I renewed it slightly earlier than usual, which is today instead of the second half of August, as I did two years back.
Knowing the usual difficulties I have with scheduling the Google Cloud certification renewal exam, I started very early and, after a couple of attempts, managed to book the exam!
I’m not sure whether I’m getting better at booking Google Cloud exams or whether the system is improving, making it easier to use.
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June 17, 2024
I took the EX358 exam a few years back and therefore it recently expired.
Since the exam is still available, I decided to take it again to renew my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Services Management and Automation certification and, therefore, extend my Red Hat Certified Architect certification.
This time around, I had the impression that the exam had changed quite a bit from the last time I took it.
While the previous time the exam reminded me mostly of an Ansible certification, this time it reminded me way more of the old RHCE exam (the EX300).
The bulk of the exam was about configuring the various services, while in the previous version, there was a lot more focus on the Ansible part, which is more like the EX294.
It is also true that EX300 was phasing out at the time, but it was still an exam many people had, while EX294 was fairly new.
However, as I suggested the previous time, it is still crucial to be able to perform all configurations manually and with Ansible because you can not know what you will be tasked to perform manually and what you will be tasked to perform using Ansible.
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October 4, 2023
As it happens every couple of years, my Google Cloud Certifications were up for renewal at the end of August.
I started to look for possible exam dates at the beginning of June since it is possible to renew Google Cloud exams only from the 60th day before the expiration to the 30th day after the expiration date.
Since the system informed me that I was outside the 60-day window, I assumed I had to wait until 60 days before the expiration to book the exam.
So I waited.
The day arrived and passed, and still, I was not able to book my exams.
After a few tickets opened to both Google and Kryterion, they informed me that they unblocked my Google Professional Cloud Architect exam, while for the Google Associate Cloud Engineer, more time to unblock it was needed.
I, therefore, took the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam.
Once that one was renewed, I noticed that Google silently and retroactively increased the validity of Google Associate Cloud Engineer certifications from 2 to 3 years, so I will be able to renew that one next year.
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August 31, 2023
A few weeks ago, I passed the Red Hat EX467 exam, which allowed me to become Red Hat Certified Specialist in Managing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform.
As of today, this is the newest Red Hat exam on Ansible.
You can notice this from the version of Ansible Automated Platform that this exam uses: 2.2.
An aspect that is already clear by looking at the objective is that this exam is completely complementary to the EX294 exam.
In fact, the EX294 focuses on how to write Ansible code.
In contrast, the EX467 focuses on leveraging the Ansible Automation Platform to ensure that Ansible automation can be effectively used in enterprise environments.
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February 27, 2023
Last week, I completed the Red Hat EX188 exam, which allowed me to become Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers.
I think that Red Hat has been able to improve the quality of its exams over time.
Newer exams tend to have better explanations of the required tasks.
It could also be that this feeling is partially due to my increasing familiarity with those kinds of exercises.
This exam is very new; in fact, I believe it was released at the beginning of the year, and this is by far the more user-friendly Red Hat exam I’ve ever done.
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November 16, 2022
Yesterday I did the Red Hat EX374 exam, which allows becoming Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform.
This exam is my sixth Ansible exam/certification, so the question is always, how is this similar or different from the others?
This exam is one of the furthest ones from the others since it focuses on Ansible Automation Platform 2 instead of Ansible Core or Ansible Tower.
This change was welcomed since AAP has many more moving parts and features compared to previous products.
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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog